I write, I read, I teach writing, and I work as a freelance editor and manuscript critiquer. If I review books, it's from the perspective of a writer. My comments on teaching writing are all my own, garnered from being in the classroom and in workshops.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

The problem with getting to the end of the year and being asked for
recommendations is that it tends to be the most recent stand-outs that
come to mind. So I'll start with those, and try and cast my mind back
for future posts!

"Clear to the Horizon" by Dave Warner. I started reading Dave Warner after seeing other people recommend his crime novels (and then someone said he was the most under-rated crime novelist in Australia so ...). I picked up "City of Light" by lucky chance in an op shop, and enjoyed the somewhat hokey depiction of Fremantle in the late 70s, main character Snowy Lane, with Aussie similes leaking out of the story left, right and centre (but a lot were quite funny). Then I managed to get hold of "Before It Breaks" which is a different character - Dan Clements - based in Broome. So "Clear to the Horizon" brings Snowy and Dan together in a bunch of crimes up around the Broome/Port Hedland/Derby area.

People always talk about crime fiction being a genre that makes the most of location, and Warner does a great job (kind of put me off travelling in the WA outback, to be honest!). We begin with a serial killer in 1999, snatching girls who are never found again, then move into the present day with a missing billionaire's daughter (Snowy's job as he's now a PI). Segue to Dan with local drug dealers and then a series of robberies by someone who can outrun just about anybody.

As with any good crime novel, the various crimes are interwoven and skilfully used to lay clues or send the reader (and the investigators) up the garden path. I really enjoyed both the setting and Warner's ability to keep all the various threads and crimes and suspects under control. We get to meet a range of local characters as well as blow-ins, mixed in with crucial iron ore deals and lots of money and drugs in the wrong places.

It's been a while since I read a crime novel that I really only put down reluctantly, and took any opportunity to grab it up again and keep reading. My one quibble is that Warner's novels are published by Fremantle Press who seem obsessed with small font sizes that make for hard reading.

"One Would Think the Deep" by Claire Zorn
I'm not a fan of tricksy titles, even when they are from quotes (all right, so I will excuse Adrian McKinty's latest novel). Plus this YA novel was about surfing, and I have zero interest in that.

However, the book has won major awards, and so I decided to give it time and read with an open mind. I'm really glad I did. Sam is not in a good place, with his mum dying on him, and then finding that the only place he has to go is to live with his aunt and two cousins. Two out of the three don't want him there. But Minty, his surfie cousin and loveable guy, welcomes him with open arms and takes him into the surf, sure that it will cure everything.

Not so, of course. Sam has violence issues, he's deeply grieving but no one seems to understand that. It's the Aussie "suck it up" syndrome that means he has to bury his feelings until they rush up screaming into the light. And people get hurt.

I was worried all the way through this novel that Zorn would take the
easy out - something "magical" would happen and Sam would be a new
person with a new hope-filled life. I'm glad she didn't, and I'm not
giving away what she did with Sam, but it's satisfying and real. The
writing is great, the surfing stuff is not overdone (but expertly
conveyed), and the emotional heart of the story is sound.
(And there is no cover image because Blogger is being very stupid today.)

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Back in the day (around 5-6 years ago), I decided to sort out my social media and various other connected things and work out what to do with it all - how to link it together, what were the best platforms for me, how it might benefit me.

At the time, I experimented. After a few months, I realised Twitter was OK but not something I wanted to spend a lot of time on, whereas I liked that FB at least showed posts for a bit longer than a few seconds. It was useful to read about others who were saying most people ended up preferring one over the other - it's just what works for you.
Since then, FB has changed the way it works to the point I almost can't be bothered because of all the sales stuff that ends up in my feed. Very soon, FB is going to start making itself irrelevant.

I continued with my blogs and websites - I'd set things up there that also mostly worked for me. And I reviewed LinkedIn and decided to use it more, setting up a better profile and entering more information so anyone searching for me about my editing and writing services would find me.

So what has gone "wrong" with LinkedIn? I am getting more and more requests to connect from people I have never heard of, who are in industries that have no connection to writing and editing and books whatsoever. Recently I've had requests from people who only use their first names, again with no connection to my work areas at all. That's so far from being professional, I don't where to start with it!

From the small information I've been able to glean (by wasting time looking at profiles), all of the people who ask to connect for no obvious reason are one of the following:
a) they want to sell me something (and anyone who I connect with who immediately sends me a message wanting to promote something to me has their message deleted)
b) they think I can be useful for something but I can't see what
c) it's about connecting for other reasons (like "romance") - before you think I'm paranoid, I can tell you I have now deleted FB Messenger on my phone after trying it twice and being spammed by males wanting to hook up.

I also have to say that I can't see the point of connecting to writers from the USA and UK whom I have never heard of, and who clearly have no idea who I am or what I do. We're unlikely to connect any other way, so more and more I am deleting their requests (and again, often if I say yes, I get a message asking me to buy their book).

I think there are good things about LinkedIn - it sends me jobs I might be interested in (even though I'm not really looking ... yet), and it allows me to have a CV on my page that may lead to work opportunities. But saying yes, willy-nilly, to all requests, defeats the purpose of it, I think.
What do you think? What's your experience of LinkedIn been?

Friday, October 20, 2017

I love how at this time of year, our Diploma nonfiction teacher, Michelle Fincke, asks her students to write about what they think/know they have learned while studying our course. Usually I post them one at a time, but these are all so different that I think they are a great example of "give a class a topic and every single one will approach it differently with their own style and voice".

Which is exactly what we aim for. We don't aim to produce cookie-cutter writers. We aim to teach skills and techniques, professionalism, and having confidence in your own voice. So here goes:

"FIND OUT WHAT YOU'RE GOOD AT, WHAT LIGHTS YOUR SPARK AND WRITE
THAT."Anne Richardson​ on five things she's
learnt from her writing course.

When I was in my mid-fifties a career change beckoned. Following my nose
rather than a well-thought out plan, I enrolled in a professional writing and
editing course. I had no clue when I started, and don’t have much now, but
here’s what I know:

There’s lots to learn.
Genres, platforms, ethics, history, technique, craft, industry standards,
grammar and punctuation…some of it you can choose, but lots of it you just have
to know. Get your running shoes on. It’s hard to keep up.

It’s hard work.
Who knew how many hours it would take to write a 50 word bio, not to mention a
blog, or a short story?

Your inner critic is on your side.
Keep a weather eye on her. Cultivate an equal relationship and make sure she
knows who’s the boss.

You can’t do it on your own.
You’ll need to be brave and get used to sharing your work. The feedback of
people you trust always makes your work better, even if it’s just because you
know why you’re ignoring them.

You can’t do it all.
Learn everything, then pick the eyes out of it. Find out what you’re good at,
what lights your spark and write that.

Anne Richardson

WHAT I'VE LEARNT FROM MY WRITING COURSE

The start of the year on a university campus is full of students becoming
disillusioned by the realisation they had picked the wrong course.Not a lot of thought went into my decision to study
writing, but here are some of the major points I would consider if I was making
that decision now.

1. Grammar is important
In my first semester studying writing, I saw many students attempting to debate
rules for use of grammar with my teacher. They insisted they had been taught
different rules and
further refused to accept what they had been taught was wrong. Don’t do this—it
doesn’t impress anyone and you’re probably going to look like an idiot.

2. The story you want to write isn’t always the one you end up writing
Having an idea of what you want to write and how it’s going to sound is good,
but it isn’t a guarantee. Often a piece of work will take shape through the
editing process and you will
discover that what you originally wanted to say and what you finished up with
are not the same.

3. Not everyone who wants to write is cut out for it
Many hobby writers expect writing to be fun and fulfilling, which it can be. It
just isn’t right away. Writing takes discipline, scrutiny and persistence. To
properly, correctly articulate a message, to convey the right emotion and to
have your words resonate is difficult. Keep in mind that underneath the
prestige and perhaps fame you might be chasing, there is a mountain of
hard-work that most people are not cut out for.

Emmanuel Giakoumakis

"Criticism is the heat that
tempers writing"Here are Stefan Downey Najdecki's thoughts on studying Professional Writing and
Editing at VU.

The Five Wisdoms of a Young Writer.
If I had five cents for every time someone said “Writing is easy” or “I want to
write a novel” I don’t know how much money I would have because I haven’t kept
count.
However, writing is not easy and you won’t find it easy after reading some of
the things I’ve learnt in the last years studying Professional Writing and
Editing at VU but one of them might make it less of a challenge.

1.Know how you write.
Some authors forge diagrams and rustle into the wilds of extended backstories,
down to knowing the name of their Hero’s (or Heroine’s) childhood soft-toy.
These writers are ‘plotters’ and only start typing when they have a map of
where to go.
Others fly by the seat of their pants, jumping headlong into the blank page and
come out the other side drenched in thousands of words. These ‘pantsers’ type
to their heart’s content and heavily edit later in the process.
Know which of these two you are, then write accordingly. The struggle to write
might just be dislodged with knowledge of the Hero’s teddy-bear or an hour-long
dive.

2.Beg, Borrow and Steal
Tolkien loved Norse Mythology, George R.R Martin took from the blood-red War of
the Roses and E.L. James loved Twilight. Every author needs fuel to power their
imagination, but you can’t find it staring into the abyss of a blank page.
Read widely into genres and nonfiction that you would never have picked up
before your quest as a writer — flicking through Mills and Boon could reward
you with the most stunning ideas for a high-fantasy epic or the report by the
Financial Review on milk-powder imports spur a neo-dystopian poem.
Imagination comes from the most unlikely of places.

3. Learn grammar like I never learnt French
Just as I never got my five-cents each time someone commented on the ease of
writing, I never was awarded my five-assarius curse upon grammar. Romans be
damned.
Grasping grammar on a high level requires a whole new language-set to identify
problems. Predicate Adjective, Demonstrative Pronoun & Present Perfect
Continuous, all sound baffling without the framework behind them. Writing may
be the tool of emotion and creativity but “It doesn’t feel right” won’t help
the placement of your commas.
Good Grammar is good communication and the better communicated your ideas are,
the happier people will be to enjoy them. So come at Grammar with the mindset
of a language you’ve never known, not the witticisms that survived from primary
school.

4.Criticism is the heat that tempers writing
Cook a cake, slave over an oven and hear someone say “That’s nice!” Try not to
yell at them as the subtlety of the flavours couldn’t make it past their
chilli-burnt palate. The same applies to writing.
Find someone who knows how to jump into your brain for just a moment and tell
you what your writing is lacking. Workshopping, or Writer’s Groups, help chip
off any imperfections that your writing has. As you also help others chip off
theirs. The duality of learning from other’s mistakes and correcting your own
is taken with a solemn step to polishing your work.
A writer in my course didn’t take advice, nor did they give advice, and their
work could not prosper. Let others help you lift your writing higher up.

5.Just do it.
I sold-out for a few more five-cent pieces, but Dan Wieden & Nike are
right.
Find the time in every day to write. Write something. Spend half an hour
describing the feeling of mushy banana on your gums and you will have flexed
your brain and progressed with your RSI. Each throw away paragraph digs deeper
into the nugget of perfect writing underneath it.
This also means that you need to find the time to write. No scented candles,
hand-pressed orange-juice or more-than-six-hours-sleep should be needed. For
each time you sit down and just type is another moment you can steal away the
day reading about milk-imports.
The perfect condition will never arise, nor the perfect author. Perfection is
in every step forward.
So step out into the world and get writing.

Friday, September 01, 2017

Where did the idea come
from for Words in Deep Blue? Can you describe the writing process?

I
can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the idea arrived. In the end I discarded the
first scene I wrote. It was of Henry’s dad sitting on the veranda. He was
writing to Pablo Neruda about love without an address for his letter.

A
while after that I opened a copy of A
Streetcar Named Desire to see that a stranger had underlined the same
phrases that I love. Of course you see this often – but the markings always
feel like notes taken in a class, markings directed by a teacher. The
underlines on Streetcar felt like a person marking them out of love, or need.

I
thought about a whole bookstore where people were allowed to write in books,
but that seemed impracticable, and so it became a set of shelves in the store,
a letter library: a place where people could write to strangers, to the poets,
to people they’d lost.

The
writing process was hard! It took me six years to write. The whole time I was
dreaming, writing, replotting, and then writing and replotting again.

Was writing this book
different from your other novels? In what ways?

I
tried to plot from the start! I was studying film structure at the time, and
reading everything I could about the correct way to write character - I wonder
now if that unsettled my process. I think next time, I’ll write the first
draft, and then apply my editing skills to it later. I need to give myself some
time to dream.

Your new novel, Take Three Girls,
is co-written with two other YA authors. Can you tell us about that process?
How did it happen? How did you go about writing it?

It
was a wonderful process. We had a lot of meetings where we talked character.
Fiona, Simmone and I had autonomy over our individual characters, but we did a
lot of group brainstorming. Fiona and Simmone have worked for TV, so I learned
a lot from their plotting sessions. It took us eight years to write, but we had
a lot of breaks in there. We always said that the friendship and individual
writing projects came first. Editing was the hardest part for me. It’s hard
enough editing when you’re the only one making changes. But when three people
are making changes, at the same time, on a manuscript, it’s logistically
difficult.

We hear a lot about
authors having to promote their books now. How do you approach this? Any tips
to share?

I
do what I love now – speaking to young people and running writing workshops. I
don’t have tips as such, but I would say you have to protect your writing
space. Take yourself away from the crowd (if you can) to write without
distraction.

You also teach creative
writing. What kinds of craft and skills do you think a writer can learn that
will help them? What can’t be learned?

I
do think writers can learn craft and skills. It’s good to study the work of
good writers – study how they write dialogue, structure scenes, use language,
write character. I loved studying structure. What can’t be learned? I can’t put
it into words, but I read a book like Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Good Squad, and I know there’s an X factor that
can’t be taught.

What are you reading at
the moment? What are a few of your favourite books?

I’ve
just finished State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
and loved it. Loved Hunger by Roxanne
Gay. I’m in the middle of The Answers
by Catherine Lacey, and loving it. My favourite YA of late is We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. It’s a
brilliant read.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Peony lives with her sister and grandfather on a fruit farm outside the
city. In a world where real bees are extinct, the quickest, bravest kids
climb the fruit trees and pollinate the flowers by hand. All Peony
really wants is to be a bee. Life on the farm is a scrabble, but there
is enough to eat and a place to sleep, and there is love. Then Peony's
mother arrives to take her away from everything she has ever known, and
all Peony's grit and quick thinking might not be enough to keep her
safe.

Where
did the idea come from for How to Bee? Can you describe the writing
process? What was the most important element for you?

Lots of ideas went into How to Bee.
I’d been wanting to write a children’s book showing childhood poverty in a
farming situation for a while, and when I saw images of people in the Sichuan
hand-pollinating pear trees, I knew I’d stumbled on a perfect and worthy
scenario. I could see that this is something we could also be doing in
Australia in the future. We also truck bees to crops and if farmers can’t
afford that, like the farmers in the Sichuan, then what option do farmers have
in a country that doesn’t value its farmers or food security.

Also I didn’t want to show a
disaster. I wanted to show life going on after a disaster. I don’t think it’s
fair to terrify children with possible disasters when they can’t do anything
about it at their age, but I wanted them to talk about bee loss, and for that
reason it couldn't be overwhelming.

I think ultimately I really wanted
to explore values. Peony has a good life and everything she needs even though
she’s desperately poor. The rich people in the story are completely insulated
from the disaster, but their daughter is miserable and terrified of the world.
The reader gets to see the world through the eyes of a determined young
character who clings to her simple values no matter what.

The voice dictated the mood of the
character and it all flowed really nicely. It’s a very simple style. I edited
it again and again to keep it on track basically, because it’s difficult to
work a lot of hours elsewhere and try to fit writing in around the edges and
keep the flow.

How
did you get it accepted for publication? Describe the process for us.

I wanted to send How to Bee into the
Ampersand Prize but it was too short at the time, so sent it off to Allen &
Unwin's Friday Pitch. Their reader liked it, said they’d be reading for a
while, and sometime around five months later they asked for me to write more in
the middle, because it was too short. By then I’d had a great idea for the
middle, wrote it over a couple of months, and they liked it so much they sent a
contract at that point to lock it down. After that it went fairly smoothly. I
added a couple of scenes, agreed with all the edits, fell in love with the cover
art immediately, and now it’s a real thing. It was lucky it went so smoothly as
I had signed a contract for In The Dark Spaces with Hardie Grant Egmont just
before How to Bee, and In The Dark Spaces was full of rewrites, so to pull
myself out of the Dark Spaces occasionally and see How to Bee actually coming
together so quickly was rejuvenating for the soul.

In
the Dark Spaces is also speculative fiction – tell us about
how you wrote this one.

I was learning some new stuff about
voice and pacing and textures of information and I had some ideas of my own I
wanted to play with, and I was getting bogged down by 'the market wants this,
the market wants that', you have to do it this way to be acceptable to this age
group, so I wrote this just for myself. Just to play. Just to entertain me. If
I didn’t have to show anyone, I could try anything. And I did. And it was wild
and crazy and I rewrote it a few times to get it right for me and put it in the
bottom drawer. But I loved it too much so got it out and sent it off to about
eight agents and got rejected by them all. I only hauled it out again and sent
it to the Ampersand Prize because How to Bee was too short.

I always think in the future the
poor people are left behind. So I like to show what it’s like for the weakest
of them. In this case, poor people are being exploited by space shipping
companies, and are quickly caught in a poverty cycle that keeps them working on
freighters going further and further from Earth with no hope of ever leaving.

It
won the Ampersand Prize – what happened then?

So it won the Ampersand Prize after
some discussion as to whether I already had a career or not (this was before
How to Bee, when I only had short stories and educational fiction). I convinced
Marisa Pintado that I didn’t want to limp along, I needed a break-out
opportunity and she agreed. And so work began on overhauling it to give it hope
and heart and to not terrorise Young Adults. I added a whole new character and
new thread, and chopped a couple of other characters and threads out. Scene by
scene Marisa Pintado and I picked through the wreckage, keeping the gems and
remodelling the rest. Luna Soo came on board later and we went through it
again, adjusting the ending, paring it back, making every scene and word
worthy. It was a long process of more than 18 months work. During which time
How to Bee passed In the Dark Spaces in production. (Ed note - In the Dark Spaces is published under Bren's pseudonymn, Cally Black).

You
have been writing for quite a few years and have had a lot of chapter books and
stories published, but these are your first novels. That takes a lot of
perseverance! What has kept you going?

I like to write. I like creating
stories. Something from nothing. I regularly stopped submitting and went off to
learn something new. It’s never the writing that’s not fun, it’s being told
that what you’ve created is mediocre. I turn inwards sometimes, and read. I
read a whole lot of work I admire and think about why, what technique the
author is using, and why it speaks to me. I try a few techniques. I try to
combine all my favourite techniques. That takes time and space and that's why
sometimes I just play at writing. You can’t call play persevering!

We
hear a lot about authors having to promote their books now. How do you approach
this? Any tips to share?

I have no idea. An author can only
reach so many people via social media, and there’s no point banging on and on
about how wonderful your own book is. I rely on book bloggers and reviewers to
say nice things which I share on social media. As well as just being a decent
person and championing other people’s successes. Have lots of writer friends.
Be generous, get some karma back. Sometimes I repost items about bee loss, to keep
the discussion going. It’s only through people knowing I have a book that has
value in aiding understanding of the effects of bee loss in a simple and
entertaining way, that they will see it as worth reading. I had little book
cards and little silicone bracelets with bees on made to hand out to kids and
they seem to like that. It’s something they can take away to remind them about
the book, or show a friend. I look for cons to go to, and I visit book clubs. I’m
not a great marketer, so I just hope it gains some momentum and readers tell
other readers about it.

What
are you reading at the moment? What are a few of your favourite books?

Still Life as a Tornado, by AS King.
She’s such a great writer. Favourite Books? I read widely, really widely. I
love science fiction ideas and worlds but sometimes the delivery of
contemporary stories is easier and more immediate. I really like Snowcrash by
Neal Stephenson, packed full of great ideas. Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan is
amazing, the atmosphere, the world building, so beautiful. I love the patchwork
plotting and great storytelling of Chuck Palahnuik in Invisible Monsters. I
love Kaufman's and Kristoff’s Illuminae and Gemina, also patchwork plotting but
told through reportage. The varying textures of the delivery of the story in
Illuminae and Gemina keep me actively engaged in the plot, and keep the me
refocussing on new information. So brilliant. And I really love the ideas and
viewpoints in Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie. The idea that artificial
intelligence cannot recognise sexual orientation, basically calling everyone
female even though the reader guesses some aren’t, is just one more refreshing
idea in that book. I love the language and mood of NoViolet Bulawayo’s book, We
Need New Names. I love how the kids talk to each other in that book, and the
matter of factness about the poverty of their lives, and how they cope. They
remind me of kids I met in Malawi.

In the Dark Spaces- a
genre-smashing hostage drama about 14-year-old Tamara, who's faced with
an impossible choice when she falls for her kidnappers.Yet
this is no ordinary kidnapping. Tamara has been living on a star
freighter in deep space, and her kidnappers are terrifying Crowpeople –
the only aliens humanity has ever encountered. No-one has ever survived a
Crowpeople attack, until now – and Tamara must use everything she has
just to stay alive. But survival always comes at a price, and
there’s no handbook for this hostage crisis. As Tamara comes to know the
Crowpeople's way of life, and the threats.

Monday, March 06, 2017

I can’t say I love
deadlines. There’s a famous quote about loving the sound of deadlines as they
fly past! But if they do nothing else, deadlines draw a line in the sand, one
that your conscious and unconscious brains recognize. By this date, or else. Or
else you get fired. Or else you lose marks. Or else you never get work from
that company again. Or else your editor has conniptions and starts talking to
you in a very strained tone.

We all know what a
deadline means. It’s how you approach a deadline, how you think about, or feel
about it, that makes the difference. If you’re like me, you plan ahead, you get
started early, you probably finish the work before the due date and that gives
you time to revise one more time. Why am I like that? Not because I’m
super-writer. Because I’ve never been able to pull an all-nighter to get
something in. Never. I love my sleep too much, and I can’t function without it.
Just the idea of having to stay up all night to complete something on time
makes my brain feel fuzzy.

I’ve had to accept
that some people thrive on this kind of work method (or think they do). They
wait until the last minute and then throw themselves into the work, totally
energized and working at the top of their game. Not. I actually don’t believe
it. I believe that they can stay up all night, that they can work really hard
and get some good stuff done. I guess what I don’t believe is that it’s their
best work. If they’d started earlier and given themselves more time to rework
and revise, surely then what they produced would have been even better?

Maybe that doesn’t
count anymore. Maybe it’s ‘pretty good’ work that gets the job done is all
people want. I don’t know … I love the euphoria of the first draft as much as
anyone. But I also love the feeling of growing, building, developing,
stretching, imagining more – all the things that happen when you have plenty of
time.

So is a deadline only
about motivation + discipline? Can it also be about allowing time to stretch? A
good deadline gives you dreaming time when you use it well. It can help you
establish a routine of a little every day, which keeps the project in your head
where your brain can quietly keep working on it for you, even when you’re off
doing something else. Yes, it’s not that I love a deadline as it swishes past
me. It’s that I love a deadline as it waits patiently under those trees in the
distance while I meander along, picking flowers, day dreaming, doing a little
work at a nice pace, but edging ever closer to meeting it.

PS Last year I had four deadlines to write the Ellyse Perry series. I spent more time on Book 1 than the others because I was also setting up the series concepts, four plotlines and introducing all the stuff that has to be in the first book. But it was worth it. "Pocket Rocket" has just been named a CBCA Notable!